Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images
This week will see the first debate of the hopefuls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and while the hitherto favorite of the Republican base, Donald Trump, will not participate, he is the one who will set the tone because he controls the Republican Party and its rivals like a ventriloquist to his puppets.
What’s more, in immigration Trump was ahead of them by making himself known in an Axios article, his immigration plan, if he were re-elected, which is nothing more than a Machiavellian collection of his most disastrous policies, adding other even worse ones.
Among them are reviving and expanding to more countries the “Muslim ban” that President Joe Biden repealed upon taking office in 2021, expanding Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s illegitimate floating wall of buoys across the entire Rio Grande, and complete his, which turned out to be a complete fiasco. He also wants to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented parents. In addition to using the National Guard and the Navy to conduct a naval blockade in the waters of the United States and near Latin America to stop drug traffickers. He wants to declare the drug cartels “enemy combatants” thus allowing the use of military force against them in Mexico. And he wants to intensify “ideological screening” to prevent those considered “communists” or “Marxists” from entering the country. It’s not clear if that would apply to the Chinese communists with whom both Trump and his sons have close business relationships.
No one is surprised that with his sights set on a second term in the White House, Trump aspires to overcome his own atrocities in immigration matters. The terrible thing is that these same ideas or some similar ones are embraced by the other Republican figures who intend to compete with Trump for the nomination and for the title of the most anti-immigrant, as is the case of the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who promulgated the immigration law most restrictive in the country in recent years, SB 1718, which is affecting the state’s economy in various areas.
In other words, if Trump is King Momo of the decadent Republican carnival, the rest of the candidates are his troupe.
Those other Republican candidates have their own anti-immigrant proposals and obviously do not condemn Trump or his plans because deep down they share them or because they fear angering the most recalcitrant Republican base that continues to favor Trump even though he faces 91 criminal charges stemming from four cases. against him, two federal and two state.
In other words, even if Trump does not appear in the debate this Wednesday, as a good ventriloquist he will control what his rivals say, especially on immigration matters. And although the other candidates did not even mention the immigration issue, which is difficult to happen, we already know what they think and what they propose, since it is a fight to show who is the terror of immigrants.
Trump’s tentacles have poisoned political discourse with lies about the “invasion” of migrants and “open” borders, with inflammatory rhetoric and language once reserved for fringe supremacist groups. The disturbing thing is that it has normalized.
And those who thought that Trump’s defeat in 2020 would mean his political end should put their ears to the ground because on the threshold of 2024 we are facing the possibility that this figure could win the Republican nomination. Many predict that will not be the case as the party wants a candidate who appeals to other voters and not just the MAGA base in order to win the general election against Biden.
But we must not forget what happened in 2016 when Trump seized the presidency from a proven politician like Hillary Clinton.
Nor should we underestimate the reach of its tentacles or the control it exercises over voters.
To show a button. I am writing from Puerto Rico and an American neighbor who has lived on the Island for decades and with whom I share a deep love for animals, left me speechless by confirming her support for Trump. Who I considered a reasonable person recited to me like a parrot the same lies as Trump on various issues, including the “invasion” of migrants across the border with Mexico. Although the Democratic and Republican parties hold primaries in Puerto Rico, those who reside on the Island cannot vote in presidential elections.
But my neighbor assured me that although she cannot vote in general elections from Puerto Rico, she is mobilizing friends and family in favor of Trump in the United States “because a corrupt man like Biden cannot be reelected,” she said.
Yet another piece of evidence that both the GOP and the MAGA base are the puppets of the ventriloquist Trump.